GREAT CLASSIC FILM MUSIC

Philharmonic Promenade Orchestra Iain Sutherland conductor Ariadne

Original studio and live sessions recorded at NOS studio, Hilversum, ca.1983/1986 Transfer and Mastering: Paul Arden-Taylor

Cover photograph: Gone with the Wind by Victor Fleming Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh (Scarlett O’Hara) 1939 / Bridgeman Images

Design: Andrew Giles

© & 2019 SOMM RECORDINGS · THAMES DITTON · SURREY · ENGLANDMade in the EU AAD

ARIADNE 5006

Ariadne

GREAT CLASSIC FILM MUSIC

Philharmonic Promenade Orchestra Iain Sutherland conductor

Star Wars John Williams 1 Main Title 5:20 2 Princess Leia’s Theme 3:57 3 End Title 4:36

Gone With the Wind Max Steiner 4 Tara’s Theme 3:39

The Adventures of Robin Hood Erich Wolfgang Korngold 5 March 4:10

Henry V William Walton 6 Charge – Battle – Chant d’Auvergne 5:37

E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial John Williams 7 Main Title 3:44

Escape Me Never Erich Wolfgang Korngold 8 Prelude 7:48

633 Squadron Ron Goodwin 9 Title Music 2:37

Love Story Francis Lai arr. Raymond Jones bl Love Theme 3:58

The Big Country Jerome Moross bm  Prelude 3:03

Alexander Nevsky Sergei Prokofiev bn The Battle on the Ice 6:16

Close Encounters of the Third Kind John Williams arr. Sutherland bo Main Theme and symphonic scenes 4:50

Mayerling Aram Khachaturian bp Adagio [from Spartacus] 8:29

The First of the Few William Walton bq Spitfire Prelude 3:40 br Spitfire Fugue 4:32

Total duration: 77:12

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I t was appropriate that, as the first public showing of moving pictures, developed

by the Lumière brothers, took place in Paris in December, 1895, the first music

specifically written to accompany such films was by the great French composer

Camille Saint-Saëns, who, in 1908, composed the score for the dramatic historical

film L’assasinat du duc de Guise, inaugurating a genre of music that truly came into

its own in the late 1920s, when sound-on-film became practical.

Up to 1927, when the first such sound-on-film The Jazz Singer was released,

music accompanying the public showing of silent films was considered essential.

It was performed live, usually by a pianist or by a small orchestra. Such music

was often improvised on the spot by the pianist or taken from existing popular

orchestral scores, but whatever the source, film music was considered necessary

to underpin the dramatic content of the film being shown – scenes of humour,

romance, drama, and so on. That function of specially selected music remained

into the age of what came to be known as the ‘talkies’, but within a few years the

concept of specially-composed music to underlie the screen action became a

new outlet for composers.

During the last 90-plus years, therefore, film music as a genre has assumed great

significance, fuelled by the vast expansion of feature film-making in the 1930s and

40s across the world, enhanced further by the development of colour processes.

The film-music genre was enhanced by the arrival in Hollywood (a region of Los

Angeles, from the early 1910s long established as the world’s film-making capital)

of many ex-patriot European composers and musicians, seeking work and eager to

take advantage of the opportunities the writing of film music offered.

Several great composers who had fled Nazi-dominated parts of Europe at that

time were attracted by the unique characteristics of film, including Stravinsky,

Schoenberg, Milhaud (although not all went on to write significant film scores)

and, most especially, Erich Wolfgang Korngold. It was Korngold’s rich post-

Romantic musical language, which earned him a powerful reputation in his

native Austria, that transferred readily to action movies – especially his scores

for Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and The Sea Hawk. Korngold’s

music, alongside that of his compatriot Max Steiner, had the greatest and most

immediate impact on audiences and fellow-composers: Korngold applied leit-

motifs (short themes, each associated with particular characters or dramatic

situations) to his scores, which often became continuous stretches of music

accompanying the screen drama, thus raising the genre to hitherto unrealised

levels of artistic achievement.

Other composers in Hollywood – as well as Steiner, including Franz Waxman,

Dmitri Tiomkin and Miklós Rózsa – followed Korngold’s example (especially after

the latter’s return to Vienna in 1948), thus making music an integral part of the

cinematic drama, which in many respects continues today. What has become so

significant a contribution to film history is that such music, written to accompany

movies, has enjoyed an independent life outside of the cinema, and thereby

enhancing the reputation of the film itself.

Our selection of Great Classic Film Music is precisely that, containing music from

many immortal feature films from the half-century 1935-1985 by composers who

were established classical musicians, or who became specialists in the genre. In

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recent decades, it is the contributions to major films of the fine American composer

John Williams which have dominated the writing of film music internationally.

We begin with music from arguably the most significant and influential cinematic

series to have appeared since the first film in the sequence, Star Wars, appeared

in 1977. This remarkable score was soon taken up by major symphony orchestras,

establishing Williams’s wide appeal and mastery of his art. Our collection begins

with a major three-movement concert suite from this first film: underlining the

opening Main Titles, Princess Leia’s Theme and the summation of the concluding

Titles. The American Film Institute considers John Williams’s music for Star Wars as

the finest film score of all time.

Max Steiner’s magnificent theme from the legendary 1939 film Gone With the Wind rivalled his colleague Korngold’s work in the cinema. Steiner (godson of

the great composer Richard Strauss) had already shown the way with his score

for the film King Kong in 1933, and the later epic movie, in length and American

Civil War subject-matter, demanded a score of similar mastery. For Gone with the Wind, Steiner responded with equal artistry, Tara’s Theme expressing the fulsome

feminine spirit of the leading character Scarlett O’Hara struggling with the private

and public dramas assailing her.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s brilliant score for the 1938 all-action historical drama

The Adventures of Robin Hood raised the stature of the genre and of the film to new

heights, the composer’s grasp of the artistic possibilities of the new medium being

total, as we hear in the stirring quick-paced March.

The contributions of the best of British film-makers in the 1930s rivalled those of Hollywood in dramatic and cinematic power, principal amongst them being the London-born director Alfred Hitchcock. A number of young British classical composers were attracted to the new possibilities, among them Arthur Bliss and William Walton, followed by older composers Arnold Bax, John Ireland and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Although Hitchock had already directed Laurence Olivier, it was Olivier’s own patriotic filming of Shakespeare’s Henry V in 1944 that drew from Walton a magnificent stylised score, so much so that the music has enjoyed independent concert life. The climax of the Battle of Agincourt – the English charge and battle – drew from Walton music of powerful individual quality, segueing into the haunting song from the Auvergne, signifying the joining of the rulers of England and France after Henry’s marriage to Princess Katherine.

John Williams’s score for E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial undoubtedly bears the hallmarks of this distinctive composer throughout this endearing fantasy of a young boy’s friendship with a lost alien child. The score abounds in delicate and occasionally powerful orchestration.

The influence of Korngold upon later composers may be judged by his final original film score, written in 1947 for the second film dramatisation of Escape Me Never (the first, from the 1930s, was a British feature film). Despite Korngold’s committed artistry, the film is little-known, one of the few instances where the richly romantic music outperformed the film for which it was written.

The multi-gifted British musician Ron Goodwin was a successful composer and conductor of a wide range of music, but is best remembered today for his

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memorable film scores, including that for Hitchcock’s final film, Frenzy, set in

London. It is, however, Goodwin’s music for the hugely successful World War II film

633 Squadron which may be his most lasting contribution to the cinema – a stirring

score of notable power and subtlety: apparently the score contains multiple

phrases in 6/8 and 3/4 tempos – ‘633’, in other words.

Francis Lai is the only French composer included in our collection, but he was

arguably the most significant, prolific and successful of all French composers

for the cinema, exemplified by his richly romantic score, featuring a dramatic

concertante piano part, for the 1970 smash-hit romantic tragedy Love Story, the

theme of which also became a big hit as a song for Andy Williams.

Jerome Moross’s admired score for the big-screen 1958 movie The Big Country is

another instance of the music outliving the film for which it was written, Moross’s

characterful music encapsulating admirably the sweep and scope of the story.

From the Stalin to the Brezhnev eras of Soviet Russia, serious music composers were

often required to provide music for Mosfilm and other Soviet film organisations.

Memorable scores were written by Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Khachaturian and

others, and for the great Russian film-maker Sergei Eisenstein’s masterly historical

drama Alexander Nevsky, Prokofiev provided one of his most characteristic scores –

so much so, that he later refashioned the extensive music he wrote for the film into

a large-scale concert cantata for soloist, chorus and orchestra, the Battle on the Ice proving a major part of the score.

The third film with music by John Williams in our collection is Close Encounters of the Third Kind, in which the five-note theme running through the score actually

plays a significant dramatic role in the telling of the compelling ‘encounters with

aliens’ story of relatively recent American history.

Although Aram Khachaturian composed film music for the Soviets, his music was

often taken by Western dramatists to illustrate their work, making him one of the

best-known of all Soviet composers outside of the USSR. The ‘Adagio’ from his epic

ballet Spartacus (originally 1955) was used several times in this way, including for

the 1968 film version of the tragic star-crossed love story of Mayerling, which also

had an original film score by Francis Lai.

Our final selection is also of film music which has become an independent concert

item – the Spitfire Prelude and Fugue from the 1942 British patriotic wartime film

The First of the Few, produced, directed and starring Leslie Howard, with music by

William Walton. The film tells the story of the development of the Spitfire fighter

plane, which played such a defining role in the Battle of Britain. The noble opening

theme, with its broad Elgarian sweep, returns at the climax of the Fugue (depicting

the construction of the aircraft, each fugal entry of the theme adding to the

musical texture as the aircraft is built) to crown the music in magnificent fashion.

Robert Matthew-Walker © 2019

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Few conductors in recent generations have shared the broad and detailed experience encompassing lighter orchestral music and the wide-range of standard concert repertoire enjoyed by Scottish-born Iain Sutherland.

His international career has taken him throughout Europe and South America, conducting a vast range of repertoire including Britten’s War Requiem in Bratislava, commemorating the end of World War II, and world premieres of Malcolm Arnold’s Four Irish Dances, Edward Harper’s Etude for Orchestra, Robert Farnon’s Third Symphony and John Dankworth’s Escapade for jazz quartet and

orchestra. National premieres include Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Violin Concerto (Scandinavia), Movimientos para Don José Haydn by René Staar (Graz), Rhapsody Brasilieros by Ney Rosauro (Rio de Janeiro) and, in Britain, Darius Milhaud’s A Frenchman in New York.

He founded the City of Glasgow Philharmonic Orchestra for the opening of Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall in 1990 and was Principal Guest Conductor of the period-instrument English Haydn Festival Orchestra from 1999-2009.

Sutherland’s international activities have run concurrently alongside hundreds of weekly broadcasts with the BBC Concert Orchestra partnering some of the world’s greatest concert artists.

He has been responsible for bringing the vast range of classical music to many millions of listeners, subtly broadening their experience – a mission he shares with that of such earlier figures as Leonard Bernstein, whose popular television programmes in the 1950s did so much to make the average viewer aware of a wide range of music.

Sutherland’s catholic outlook on music makes him the ideal conductor for a recording entirely devoted to Leonard Bernstein’s concert works and issued to mark the centenary of the American’s birth. What makes this album particularly interesting is that it was recorded in Germany by the leading orchestra in Lower Saxony’s capital city – a further demonstration of Iain Sutherland’s mission to bring the finest examples from the lighter classical music repertoire to as broad an audience as possible.

Iain Sutherland

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IN LONDON TOWN

SOMMCD 0117

BERNSTEIN: Broadway to Hollywood

SOMM ARIADNE 5002

“[Sutherland’s] Bernstein is strong and trenchant, often exhilarating, never sentimental”

Gramophone

“Sutherland’s grasp of the musical qualities of each score is impressive… fully recommended”

Musical Opinion

“Iain Sutherland… proving that ‘light’ music can be taken seriously”

Classic FM

“There are few better guides through this music than Iain Sutherland”

The Light Music Society Magazine

“Iain Sutherland’s performances of music of this character are endemic to a conductor who seems to have these pieces as part of his cardio-vascular system”

Musical Opinion

Philharmonic Concert Orchestra

Iain Sutherland

Hanover Philharmonie

Iain Sutherland